The most extensive sensory organ of the body is the starting point of Marcela Astorga's work. Curated by Silvia Rottenberg, the works were created in situ and proposed to awaken the sensory perception of visitors. The skin is represented in its ambivalence to protect but it also needs to be protected. It covers, and at the same time, it is marked by the traces of the passage of time, like an archive of life.

A narrow corridor invites us to inhabit the experience from a "here and now", the present as a totality, passing between bodies that caress the skin to end up in front of a large installation of frayed textiles scattered on the floor (like roots, waterfalls). One can also appreciate the leather belts or girths that belonged to the Argentine Army, fallen into disuse, woven in wire mesh, as well as what protrudes from the walls from white grids -because the walls listen, know, know-, next to the consultation space of the bases of the victims of State Terrorism.

Or palpate from the visuality and sound (with the pure blow of a bricklayer) the experience of the video installation "Óculo" (Oculus), a project that she has continued to develop since 2019 on houses under demolition. According to the artist, the protection we all long for can be destroyed. Astorga has already worked with the real uses of fur: leather, wool, or horse bristles, trying to show that everything interconnects. For the exhibition, the artist reinforces the idea of the different layers of skin in our environment: our own epidermis-our barrier and bridge to each other and the social, political, and ecological system; our clothing; the home; the social construct; and the earth.

"Desatando la línea de tiempo" interweaves memory, time, and processes to account for creative practices that engage them as social subjects, with results that give rise to installation, sculptural, video, and performance. Astorga incorporates the idea of the skin as a container, but extends it to every possibility of associating skin with form and shelter, playing thoroughly with the exhibition space and the place where he installs his open plots to show.

She was awarded at many art competitions for the best graphics and painting, and holds awards from national biennials and the Academic Mural Painting Award in Bulgaria.

This is what the artist conveys about her artistic approach:

<<I think, without being too literal, that through my work I would like to immerse myself in our time, a time of exponential development of the technical revolution. Interesting processes in artistic practices are also observed. The modern horizons of visual culture are based on dialogue and juxtaposition between divergent, often paradoxical at first glance, ideas, but ultimately united through a metaphorical language. The dynamics of modern times have also set the hectic rhythm of the author's reactions - seething, rift and transformations populate the works. We live in a perpetually changing and inconstant world woven of contradictions and untruths.

The point of view of believing in "absolute truth" (read reality) seems to be inapplicable today. New meanings are generated, based on the negation of reality and the views of the so-called "situational ethics" (A.T. Robinson). Our consciousness is constantly attacked by various sensory provocations, the situation is brought to the point of absurdity. It comes to a union of real antitheses, in the sense of a modern reflection of the world as a set of oxymorons, in the theoretical and practical field of visual arts. They are virtually directly related to modern media, without which our life is already unthinkable.

This initial paradox has provoked me to experiment, both in my ideas and in terms of their realization. I look for my truth, in situational, meaningful connections and juxtapositions, within the limits of a rich toolbox. I express my author's will, both in metaphorical figurative distinctiveness, and in the use of diverse materials such as: canvas, paper, plastic, oil and acrylic paints, pigments, pastels, etc. Here, congruence with reality is subject to my subjective observation and opinion. On the one hand, images from reality, on the other hand others, as if digitally decomposed images, are united in new, paradoxical artistic facts. Often, the figurative concepts used contain what by definition would be called oxymorons – they combine opposite ideas. 

Household objects and human figures intertwine with abstract patterns, united in a single view oxymoron, as my overall creative concept. Semantic unity, is not so directly influenced by the materials themselves, but by the symbolic expression of my ideas. This multi-layered imagery and contrasting expressiveness are my reaction to the paradoxical times in which we live.>>

(Dessislava Denava)

Her works are represented in the permanent collections of art museums in Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and are part of private and public collections worldwide. She had been selected to represent the contemporary ceramic arts from Romania at the European Ceramic Context 2010 in Denmark and at the national exhibition “L`art céramique contemporaine roumaine”, 2010 in Paris. A retrospective exhibition, "Part of the Road Travelled", curated by Mălina Ionescu, was presented at the National Contemporay Art Museum in Bucharest (2021-2022). (https://www.jakobovits-marta.ro/)